We don't have much of a competitive market anymore... especially where cell phones are concerned.

Yeah most people now and days just buy the best looking or cheapest cell phone. If Noika loses 4 sales from this they don't care because they have 4million more.

It's worse than that: they buy the best looking or cheapest phone THAT THE OPERATOR SELLS.

The operator shouldn't be involved in the sales at all, they're just meant to be selling the service. You should be able to use any device you want, and move it to another service if you're unhappy.

Buying a phone from an operator is like buying a car from a fuel station.


All European countries have very high sales taxes, 20% or more, whereas most American states seem to have no sales tax at all. So that's 20% added. I know second hand stuff doesn't have sales tax, but second hand prices are based on new prices.

The rest IS mostly from the exchange rate. A few years ago one pound bought less than 1.5 dollars, now it buys over 2 dollars. Even the Euro is starting to approach 2 dollars, when it used to be worth less than 0.8 dollars. The US dollar is incredibly weak, and it makes all foreign prices seem much higher.

The 20% tax might be part of it. Its 9% where I live and that is alot higher then alot of places. That would make final price of an N810 about $50 more for you then me. $100 more for someone who has no sales tax. Yeah there is alot of talk about changing so you can use your cell phone on any company. Verision is supose to start since they got part of that FCC Ebay auction. I don't know if we will ever really see it happen or not.

The thing is, phones are unlocked by default when they're manufactured. The very first phones to hit the streets are the unlocked versions, because they're the "plain vanilla" model.

As I have mentioned before in other threads, here in Finland locking was actually illegal for many years, so for many years everyone used unlocked phones, and it didn't cause any problems at all.

Operators which lock phones deliberately lock them to stop you changing operator, there's absolutely no technical reason for locking.

All that locking does is reduce competition between operators, which raises prices and lowers service quality. It makes them try less hard to please their customers.

Yeah, I personally use a Nextel Phone on a SouthernLinc service. I unlocked the phone my self and moved the sim card over.

I can't believe it was made legal

(As for me, I just unlock my phones, for my W810, I paid £15 for a service cable and downloaded a cracked version of SEMCTool which generated me the codes)

(Then a year later, you can do it for free with included cable :P)

The guarantee is only a safety net, it isn't the end of service. If your phone dies at 1 year and one day, you still can get it replaced, regardless of guarantee as consumer rights cover it. You bought the phone with a reasonable expectation that it would last longer than a year.

Nokia sucks. :-/

I have an N810 that I purchased in the USA and I live in Canada. Unfortunately I took a tumble and cracked my screen. Called Customer I don't care service and was told to send it to repair facility in Ontario Canada. So I did and it was sent back to me that they can't repair USA Model. ???? It's same part in every country. Called back to Nokia and they said I can send to USA repair but they can't return it to me in Canada. They have to send it to a USA address???? Holy crap!!!

I am willing to pay for the repair. Not warrenty related. Their best answer was "I can't do anything for you" and basically hang up on me.

Please....Anyone no where to get an new LCD display at a resonable price. Part # 4850070. Thanks for any help.